I’ve been in my office, sitting at my desk for just over a half hour today. That’s all the time it took for me to fire off a snarky, yet professional, email to the one guy giving me grief. And my boss asked me how getting into grad school was going.
Not well, I told him, renewing my mourning for my low GRE scores and huge lack of confidence.
“How am I going to be incredible if I don’t get into grad school?” I thought to myself one more time.
See, I have this new great fear in my life: being mediocre. But this comes from a very valid source. I was listening to Dr. Laura, probably about a year ago, and she said something to a desperate woman who was pushing 30 and single. (You guys can rail on me about Dr. Laura later; it’s not really the point of this story.) The woman was complaining that she couldn’t get a date with an incredible guy; that the only ones left lived with their mamas and had dead-end jobs. Dr. Laura asked the woman what she was doing to be incredible herself. Turned out the woman lived with HER mama and had her own dead-end job. Therefore, my little brain said, the key to finding an incredible man who’ll stick around is to BE an incredible woman.
Hence, grad school. Which is proving difficult to get into. Le sigh. This difficulty is simply reaffirming to my already poor self-esteem that I’m doomed to be mediocre.
So then, I think, what if I settled for interesting. I could be an interesting person, and therefore attract the interesting people.
Sadly, I’m already certain I’m a boring person. I simply never have anything intelligent to say. And I’m just awful at small talk. I’ve bored away one incredible guy and I’m pretty positive I’m currently boring away another. How dreadful to lose people because they are bored to tears when they talk to you or spend any amount of time with you? Ugh! I cannot live like this!
People also do not find insecurity to be interesting, either. I don’t understand this. As a whole, people don’t like the cocky, the over-confident, the braggart. But they don’t like the person that honestly expresses their doubts in themselves or says “I think I’m boring’ out loud.
What’s a mediocre girl to do?!
In what seems to be a hugely vain attempt at killing the mediocrity monster, I’ve joined a women’s hockey team. Why hockey, you ask? Well, because a very interesting, horrifically incredible friend of mine asked me to join. And I thought, hey, she’s amazing and plays hockey, so this could be a route to awesomeness. Unfortunately, the Good Lord did not bless me with natural hockey skills, and the general consensus is it takes about a year to hold one’s own on a hockey rink. Double le sigh.
Since it appears there is not a swift route to incredibility, I suppose I shall try the grad school thing again, resubmit my application, beg on my knees for letters of recommendation, and pray I actually get a good GRE score this time. I sorely wish I hadn’t convinced myself that grad school is the sure road to awesomeness and confidence. But, at least I’ll feel like I’m moving forward, working toward something, and not simply existing in this world.
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